Kaleidoscope
by TheVelvetDusk
Summary: Adjust the lens, let a little light in, and even the broken bits can transform into something new and dazzling. { lyatt . a series of vignettes . post-S1 . timeless big bang }
1. prologue

_A/N : IT'S FINALLY HERE. The Timeless Big Bang starts now (or at least it's true in my time zone)! YAY, right? but because I have a needy thirst for feedback and attention, it would be really super cool if you took a moment to review between each chapter of this fic. Obviously the (understandable) temptation is to just breeze through all 7 chapters at once with wild super-speed (and who am I to stop you from doing that?), but uh... a quick pause for reviewing at the end of individual chapters (if you feel so inclined) would warm this author's heart :) OK enough begging, THANKS IN ADVANCE._

 _ALSO. As part of the Timeless Big Bang, this fic was matched up with artwork by tumblr user elizabethkween - HOW COOL IS THAT? Go check out the TBB page on tumblr because I've never had fic-related artwork before & we should all be fangirling over this awesome stuff together._

 _This fic picks up somewhere post-S1 finale with the assumption that the Time Team is chasing after Emma now. And it's a series of vignettes, so assume that there may be some skips forward in present-day time between chapters. (hope that makes sense!)_

* * *

 _Kaleidoscope: Prologue_

When Lucy allowed herself to look back on the worst days, the ones where she'd been more lost than ever before, she knew how easily it all could have gone wrong. The jigsaw pieces of their lives had seemed to be so decisively broken, fractured, useless. Jagged shards of hurt and uncertainty surrounded them, tore at their fragile existence, threatened to undo everything with the slightest shifting wind. They had been one misstep away from spiraling into a cosmic black hole and never coming home again.

But instead of giving in and giving up, they chose hope. They chose perseverance. Eventually, they chose each other. The pieces spun back together slowly. Colors grew stronger in spite of the darkness, rearranging themselves into a blur of beautiful shapes, weaving closer and closer together until there was no escaping the love that radiated between them. With every turn of the wheel, a brighter picture emerged. The result was something crisper, grander, stronger than anything she'd ever known. And in the end, the lesson was clear - adjust the lens, let a little light in, and even the broken bits can transform into something new and dazzling.


	2. yellow

_Yellow:_ _Highway 80, Alabama. 1965._

Twin lines ran on endlessly in either direction, the incessant stripes of yellow seeming unnaturally vivid to her in the dusky aftermath of such a senseless tragedy.

"Go talk to him, Lucy."

She peered up at Rufus with a frown, unable to fake a lack of comprehension once she laid weary eyes upon the grim creases marring his face. "Are you sure you aren't the one who needs someone to talk to right now?"

He shook his head but the gesture was anemic at best. "I'll make it. I've never had any choice, you know? There's no avoiding it for me. This shit is the same old, same old...bigots haven't changed too much in fifty years. Wyatt, on the other hand? He does a damn good job of hiding out from his demons. This has to be opening a giant can of worms for him."

Lucy nodded, volleyed an insufficient prayer up to the evening sky, and tried to numb herself against the speckles of blood that decorated the lonely stretch of road as she crossed to him. Wyatt sat stiffly on the edge of a dented guardrail, eyes turned downward to the sullied pavement beneath his feet. He was examining it from every angle - the angry tire marks, rapidly drying blood, an assortment of shattered wreckage and debris. The end of a life summarized so brazenly, so cruelly.

He didn't immediately acknowledge her as she lowered herself onto the ledge of warped steel, but she wasn't discouraged by his lacking reaction. They'd gotten close enough to know that words could come and go between them without the need for a manufactured effort. Several minutes passed in silence before he finally spoke, and when he did, it was in a voice far rockier than she'd heard from him in quite some time.

"How old was she?"

Lucy inhaled carefully, racking her brain for the details on an incident that she only knew with some degree of peripheral knowledge. She'd studied the full spectrum of the Civil Rights movement before of course, but she couldn't call it a point of expertise on her part. That didn't matter, though. With that ragged tone of his reverberating in her ear, she was determined to deliver an answer as best as she could. "Late thirties...forty at the oldest."

His fists clenched around scathing metal. "Too goddamn young."

She nodded, feeling an irrepressible helplessness deep down in her gut as she observed the hard set of his jaw.

"Who...who did she leave behind?"

This fact comes to her faster than the last, but she's far more reluctant to answer him this time. "She was survived by a husband - her second husband actually - and five kids. Two of them were from her previous marriage."

Wyatt breathed out an ugly barrage of curse words, his head hanging even lower as anger spiraled through him. "And this was the right thing for us? To let her die even when - "

"She died for something she believed in, Wyatt," she broke in calmly. "She was driving a teenage boy home because she knew it was the right thing to do no matter what society said about his skin color."

"And now her family has to go on without her," he said with unmasked bitterness.

Lucy put her hand over his, relieved when he made no move to brush her off. "She knew the risks. She turned on the news one night last week and saw these same Civil Rights protesters being assaulted on this exact highway. Viola Liuzzo traveled to Alabama for one reason, and that was because she knew she couldn't sit safely at home and stay on the sidelines of an important cause. She chose to help."

A muscle in his jaw ticked once, then twice. He turned slowly, eyes screaming out to her with a pain that nearly knocked her sideways. "Rittenhouse...they were going to rescue her? Why, because she was white? If anything, I would have thought they'd be on the side of the Klan. Why wouldn't' they want her to die tonight?"

"I don't know...I don't know much of anything anymore, do I?" She tried to laugh it off, but the sound was filled with defeat. "They certainly made their best effort to get in the middle of it, but I can't understand their motives any better than you can."

"That's a scary thought," he returned dully. "My understanding goes about as far as my shoelaces. It's no good if we're both that lost."

Lucy swept her fingers over the back of his hand, measuring the potential disaster of what she was about to say and diving in even as she feared the worst. "Wyatt...I-I know that this has got to be stirring up a lot of bad memories for you..."

He arched away from her, letting her hand fall flat against the guardrail. "I'll be fine."

"Bullshit," she murmured affectionately. "No lies, remember?"

It was his own rule, the motto he'd drilled into her head ever since she'd come to him in tears over the discovery of her Rittenhouse heritage several weeks ago. He'd promised that he'd do everything he could to help her through it as long as she was always honest about the reality of what she was facing - honest with him, honest with herself.

He bent over his knees now, the impact of those words echoing back to him with some discomfort now that he was the one on the honesty hot seat. "I don't want to talk about it, okay? Not now, not with you..."

For all of the ways he could have tried to squirm his way out of this conversation, it had never occurred to Lucy that he could inflict so much damage to her own emotions in the process. She couldn't hide the catch in her throat, couldn't withhold the miserable sound that erupted from deep inside her with the backlash of his dismissal.

Wyatt swung toward her in a panicked millisecond, his eyes distraught as he cupped her face and made her look at him. "That came out way wrong, Lucy. _Way wrong_. I meant - "

"It's alright," she cut in bleakly, "you don't have to - "

"Bullshit. No lies, Luce. It is _not_ alright." There were actual tears in his blue eyes now, and the shimmering effect of it was more catastrophically beautiful than she could ever put into words. "What I meant is...is that you're the last person who needs to hear about this. It's not fair to put this on you. We - we're supposed to be moving forward, aren't we? What can I offer you if I'm still hung up on Jessica's death?"

She shook her head gently, tears now crowding their way into her vision too. "I don't want you to worry about what you can offer me. I want you to take as much time as you need."

"But I told you that I was ready to leave the past behind, and yet here I am doing the exact opposite." His thumbs swept over her cheekbones as he watched her with raw desperation. "I...I'll deal with it, I promise."

"You want to promise me something?" she asked quietly. "Promise me to take care of yourself. Promise me that you'll always be honest about how you're feeling. Promise me that we're friends before we're anything else, because I want you to be in my life no matter what possibilities may or may not work out between us in the future."

Wyatt leaned in closer, pressing a docile kiss to her forehead before draping an arm around her shoulders and drawing her into his side. "You're getting really good at these pep talks, Preston. Pretty soon you're going to be taking over for me entirely."

She sank against his shirtfront with a melancholy smile. "Hardly. I take all of my cues from you."

"Oh please, don't go and get all maudlin on me now," he scoffed impassively. "You're amazing all on your own. You don't need my help."

Lucy sat up with a stern look, both hands grasping at his shoulders. "Uh uh, none of that. You're the only thing that's been keeping my head above water these last few months, and that's been true even before my mom dropped the Rittenhouse bomb, Wyatt. You always have my back. You tried to defend me when Bass Reeves - _the_ _Bass Reeves_ \- was livid with my actions. You've fought for my chance to bring Amy home over and over again. You drove me to see my grandfather when I got back from '54, knowing that I wanted you to go with me without having to ask. You've told me a million times that there's nothing wrong with still feeling conflicted about protecting my mom even when she's at the top level of all this shit we've been forced to deal with. You're - you're like this unbelievable rock in my life, and I know that's insanely cheesy, but my God, don't ever doubt how much I need you."

He stared at her, astonished and slack-jawed, practically gaping like a fish at her rambling revelation.

Her cheeks started to burn with the embarrassment of how much she'd just unloaded on him without any real preamble, but every word of it had been inescapably true. She took a breath, inclining just a little closer so that she was sure she still had his attention. "There's no statute of limitations on grief, Wyatt. You have all the space you need, okay? I'm not going anywhere. You know where to find me if and when you're ready."

Lucy stood then, forcing a smile to her face before she moved to rejoin Rufus on the other side of the road. She only took a half-step before Wyatt's hand cinched firmly around her wrist.

"You - you know you've been a rock for me too, right?" he asked in a scratchy baritone. "I would have given up a hundred years ago if you hadn't been there to get me through it, Lucy."

A real grin fluttered to the surface as she tugged on his arm, urging him to his feet. She was far too exhausted to figure out if he'd been using that hundred year milestone in a literal or figurative sense, because in the complicated mess of their lives, she figured either could be true. They've charted out a bewildering course through time, the blur of backwards and forwards motion becoming too difficult for even Lucy to comprehend at this point. The ticking momentum of time had become a relative matter, but her feelings for him were set in stone.

They passed back over the remains of the car crash - those same tire marks, the rapidly drying blood, an assortment of shattered wreckage and debris - and Lucy tasted acid all over again when faced with the devastation of Viola Gregg Liuzzo's murder at the hands of the Ku Klux Klan. Selfishly, she knew she was also tasting acid over the fact that she'd more or less released Wyatt of any obligation to those possibilities that they'd been tiptoeing around in the weeks following that conversation back at Mason Industries.

Something inside of her snapped in half as she let that last glimmer of hope fade away. As much as he deserved a fresh start - hell, even as much as he might actually want it for himself - there was no way around the fact that he still saw Jessica Logan reflected in the face of every woman who died on their watch. Whether it was a reporter in 1937 or a Civil Rights activist in 1965, he saw the same ghost, relived the same guilt-ridden heartache, mourned the same loss anew.

But Lucy swore that to her dying day, she would uphold her end of the bargain - she wasn't going anywhere, wouldn't desert him in his grief, not even if staying by his side under these terms would eventually shred her to pieces.

* * *

 _a/n : please review!_

 _Also, as of the moment I published this fic, I officially have one story per every letter of the alphabet (not all Timeless stories, but still true nonetheless). I've told a few of you about this nerdy ambition of mine & now it has been accomplished :) YAY. (i'm weird and I know it)_


	3. crimson

_Crimson:_ _Southampton County, Virginia. 1831._

The first thing she saw was the blood on his face, a dark crimson streak racing from his temple to his ear. She moved toward it like a moth drawn to light, but Wyatt instantly snapped to attention, clamping her arm back down to her side before she could lift more than just a finger.

" _Lucy_ ," he whispered roughly, mouth hanging ajar for several seconds after her name had squeezed past his cracked lips. "God, hold still, okay? Don't try to move."

"You - " she wheezed unevenly and fought against the bruising weight in her eyelids. "You're...bleeding."

He somehow seemed to scowl and smirk all at once, but the outright terror in his eyes was much louder than anything else in his expression. "Hate to be the one to tell you, but you aren't looking too hot yourself, slugger."

She tried to argue, but the sandpaper in her throat wouldn't budge. It came to her in pieces - the taste of copper on her tongue, a spiritless hum droning on and on inside of her head, and a strange fiery pain in her shoulder.

"Am - am I dying?"

"No, hell no," he breathed out emphatically. "Not on my watch, ma'am."

Lucy attempted a nod, but she was pretty sure her head hadn't moved at all. She indulged in the exhausting pressure behind her eyes and invited the darkness of oblivion. Wyatt was okay, and that was the only thing that seemed to permeate her cobwebbed brain. _Wyatt was okay_. She could rest now.

Unfortunately for her, he didn't seem to agree with that logic. "No, Lucy, stay with me a little longer, alright?"

Her arm shook with his pesky insistence. She didn't have the energy to protest, settling for an unwilling groan when she couldn't make herself say the actual word _no_.

"Lucy!" Wyatt's voice rose and cracked, dissipating furiously like a wave coming ashore. "I mean it, you need to open your eyes. C'mon, Luce."

When she finally mustered the strength to peer up at him again, there were two parallel tracks of tears skating down his face. "Wy-Wyatt...?"

"Hey," he answered in a husky timbre. "Listen, you've got to help me out here. We're not...we aren't getting anywhere fast, so you've got to fight through the pain and shock for a long as you can manage. Can you do that for me?"

She blinked heavily, but it did nothing to eradicate those strange fuzzy spots dancing at the edges of her vision. "Mmm. Yeah, I...I'll try."

"Okay, let me - " he broke off for a moment, cursed under his breath as he awkwardly dragged himself sideways, then gently rearranged her head to rest in his lap. "Does that feel any better?"

Lucy waited a moment to let the raging heat in her skin simmer down ever so slightly, then forced a purging cough with some difficulty. Her head cleared a little and then she could finally focus on his face for more than just a few seconds at a time. "Yes. Less woozy."

That produced a tiny light in his clouded eyes. "Good. Let me know if there's anything else I can do, okay? Not that I...I'm sorry, Lucy..."

She had no idea what he was apologizing for, but she was pretty sure this was a definite example of blissful ignorance, so she decided to ask the question that mattered more to her anyhow. "Are you...badly hurt? Your head?"

That inquiry seemed to frustrate him, but he answered it nonetheless. "My head is fine"

"Doesn't look fine."

"Trust me, it could be worse," he mumbled with a grim look.

"Wyatt," she exhaled with some effort. "I don't like it when you get hurt."

"I'm supposed to be the one who gets hurt. That's why I'm here, right? To get the ugly stuff done. You - you're not supposed to...you're the historian, Luce. I'm the soldier." His voice grew thin, but he echoed his words once more in a strained whisper, practically pleading with her, "I'm the soldier."

He wasn't making any sense to her, and his expression was faraway and frantic. She felt his hand in her hair, combing softly through the curls that had apparently tumbled out of her era-appropriate updo.

"Are you mad at me? I - I feel like I did something wrong but can't remember it."

His gaped down at her like she'd just kicked a kitten. "Mad at you? No, Lucy, _God no_."

"Okay," she murmured. Her lashes wavered, slipped downward, begging for a break from the burdensome task of remaining open.

"Hey, none of that," he said quietly, his hand falling over her cheek and stroking slowly. "Let's talk, okay? Tell me something. Anything you want - a story, a memory from when you were a kid, a history lesson, whatever."

"Mmm, I'm too tired. You talk instead."

"Yeah, great idea," he smirked down at her, and that lively look was almost enough to erase the gruesome edge of blood mingling into his hairline, "except I don't know any good stories, all my childhood memories are shitty, and my best attempt at a history lesson would just be regurgitating information that I learned from you. That doesn't leave us much to go on, now does it?"

Her mouth lifted into a weary half-smile. "You...you sell yourself too short. I like your stories."

His thumb froze on the crest of her cheekbone. "Okay, here goes nothing. Not so much a story, but a little secret I've been meaning to let you in on."

"That sounds good," she returned as firmly as she could.

"Alright, so here it is...I can't stop thinking about what you told me back in 1965, and I'm thinking we ended that whole discussion on the wrong note."

She tried to frown, wanted to reach for his hand but couldn't make her body comply, so she just coughed out a jumble of confused words instead. "That...that was weeks ago."

"Yeah well, there's no statute of limitations on grief, right?" He gave her a sheepish look at the use of her own words from that night in Alabama, his blue gaze shimmering in the low light. "You wanted me to promise you that we're friends before we're anything else, and I get that, but I - I've been going over what you said every damn day since then, and it's no good, Lucy."

"No good being my friend?" she slurred with her closest approximation of a teasing tone.

"No good being _just_ your friend," he answered immediately, not an ounce of jest reflected in his somber expression. "I had an awful dream the night that we got home from that jump, but much to my surprise, it had nothing to do with losing Jess. It was about losing you."

Lucy took a stuttering breath and tilted her head against his leg as she waited for him to go on. He cleared his throat with a weak rumble, looking somewhere far above her head as he forced himself to keep talking with obvious unease.

"That wreck on the side of the road after Viola Liuzzo had been shot...her car smoking in the ditch, the skid lines from the breaks, all of it...that had to take you to a bad place too, didn't it? You - you told me that you almost died in a car accident when you were in college, Lucy, but you didn't so much as flinch while we were dealing with the wreckage in '65. You were too busy taking care of Rufus, taking care of me...but God, can you honestly tell me you didn't have nightmares after that jump?"

She sighed, but it did nothing other than create a horrible tension somewhere in her chest and it was all she could do not to scream out in pain. "I - I did, but they...they weren't so bad."

Wyatt's face was twisted with sadness, but his voice carried a contrasting note of levity. "Sorry babydoll, but I'm calling bullshit on that one."

"Your bullshit meter is too damn good," she muttered indifferently, allowing herself to succumb to the bliss that came with momentarily closing her eyes again.

" _Lucy_ ," he appealed from seemingly miles away, "Lucy, don't..."

She couldn't hear him anymore. She was swept off to a quieter place, a far more comfortable place, a place where she didn't hear the sound of Wyatt's words shattering with tears as she went limp in his embrace. Couldn't discern the sound of Rufus breaking through the door a moment later, didn't hear his courageous whoop as he charged in armed with a gun in either hand and a take-no-prisoners glare on his face. She didn't get to see the unmistakable relief on Wyatt's blood-streaked face nor feel his injured leg begin to spasm from beneath her as his thinly held control finally wavered. It was all lost on her, the entire world consumed by a blanket of rapturous ignorance.

And then she was blinking against a harsh white light, a steel table beneath her and a familiar swipe of nagging crimson shoved so close to her face that she couldn't see anything beyond it. She tried to sit up for a better look at whatever it was that was crumpled up next to her, but even the slightest movement left her gasping with a stiff and searing pain.

The red blur moved immediately, and then a bleary-eyed Wyatt lifted his head from the edge of the table, a butterfly bandage stretched over his forehead and his voice as rusted as his sleeve once he tried to speak. "Hey, easy there. You need to stay where you're at."

"Are...are we home?"

He nodded with a thin smile. "Welcome to 2017, Luce. Glad to have you back."

She didn't return his expression. "What happened to your arm?"

"My arm?" Wyatt glanced downward and understanding lit his features as he took note of his stained sleeve, and then his eyes were back on hers with a crestfallen grimace. "Nothing happened to my arm. That's from what happened to _your_ shoulder."

"Oh." She squinted down at what she could see of her body, and was met with the sight of a thick white bandage just where he'd suggested it should be. "I...I don't really remember getting hurt."

"It happened so fast," he answered in a tone that was both contrite and pensive, "I chased Emma from one farm to the next barn over. She was warning the family about the coming rebellion when I found her, and she didn't appreciate the interruption. Turns out they were second-generation charter members of Rittenhouse, and it didn't take much convincing from Emma to get the farmer to pull a knife on me."

"You had just been stabbed when I got there," she inhaled slowly. "Your leg..."

Wyatt looked away, but not before she saw the thunderclouds of torment gathering in his gaze. "Yeah. Then you went a bit ballistic and tried to get between us, which prompted little Farmer Rittenhouse Junior to shoot you with his dad's rifle. And shockingly enough, _that_ caused Emma to go a bit ballistic too."

"Really? She did? I definitely don't remember that."

"Oh yeah," he muttered with a raised brow. "She was super pissed, but I think it was mostly from fear of what would happen to her if you didn't make it out of 1831 alive. She was rambling about how your mom would react and that this somehow negated the entire mission, going on and on like a crazy person until she hightailed it out of there."

"So they aren't currently planning my ultimate demise? What a relief," Lucy mumbled caustically.

Wyatt gave her a sluggish grin. "It actually turned out to be pretty helpful. She inadvertently cleared a few things up for me in her panicked state. Seems like they're trying to make up for the hits they took with your Ethan Cahill plan...they're rallying more Rittenhouse families from the past who either died out prematurely or fled from their responsibilities and never came back into the fold. This jump was about rescuing certain people from the slave uprising. She was there to minimize the casualties that affected the organization."

"They're rebuilding?" she asked with a scrunched brow. "By resurrecting lost recruits?"

"I'm almost positive. Rufus and I did a little digging while you were in surgery. Obviously there's no way to know the exact results of her meddling in 1831 unless you somehow memorized the names of all the causalities from our original timeline..."

She scoffed at him with narrowed eyes. "I'm not _that_ good, Wyatt."

"Didn't think so," he said with a hint of laughter. "But I'm betting you can at least give me a ballpark estimate of how many people it should have been."

"Somewhere around 60, I believe."

He sighed, mouth bending downward. "Just as I expected. The current estimate for lives lost during Nat Turner's slave rebellion is down to 40. She saved several families from their imminent deaths."

Lucy tried to keep the panic from reaching her voice, her mind grappling with the booming effects of what Emma had accomplished. "You really did your homework while I was out of commission, didn't you?"

"Had to do something productive," he retorted with a grunt. "I was ready to start climbing the walls once they kicked me out of here, so yeah...I decided to make myself useful in the meantime."

She glanced warily over the rim of the medical table, noticing for the first time that his bandaged leg was propped up in a second chair beside her, the trousers he'd donned for the trip to the 1800s cut off in a jagged rip above his knee. "Shouldn't you have been relegated to the infirmary too?"

"Eh, I'll live. It's clean and covered. I'll be good as new before too long, and so will you."

No matter how casually - flippantly, even - he tried to brush off the whole incident, Lucy saw the grisly shadows that lined his face. She reached for his hand, a tiny tremor running through her fingers as she felt the instant assurance of his responding grasp. With her hand enclosed in his, she could finally breathe a little easier, almost forgetting the twinges of discomfort in her chest.

"I..." he sighed and visibly collected himself for a long moment. "I said a lot of things in that barn. I don't know if you were really with it at that point, but - "

"I heard every word," she whispered, eyes filling with unanticipated tears.

He smiled softly and brought her hand up to his whiskery cheek. "Well that wasn't just the stress talking. I meant it, all of it, okay? I - I don't want to be so afraid of losing someone else that I cheat myself out of the best thing in my life. The best _person_ in my life. I want to be with you, Lucy. Friendship isn't cutting it anymore."

"Are you..." she looked away, her eyes falling to his injured leg as she tried to force the question past her reluctant lips, "...are you really sure that it's not too soon for you?"

His other hand came up to capture her chin, tilting it until she was looking at him again, and his watery smile had her heart lurching inside of her chest. "Yes, ma'am. Couldn't be more sure if I tried."

There was nothing glamorous about their first real kiss. Lucy could barely lift her head from the table, Wyatt wasn't much better off as he gracelessly shuffled his chair nearer to her, and it only lasted for a few exhilarating seconds. His mouth flitted lightly over hers, a sweet and reverent pressure that left her longing for more before it was even over.

He leaned back with an impish grin, but the words that followed were nothing but sincere. "Thank you for saving my life out there, Luce, but how about you never pull a stunt like that again?"

"And leave all the heroics to you?" she asked dully, the pull of medicated sleep beginning to wash over even as she fought to stay alert for just a little while longer. "We'll see about that."

Wyatt shook his head and released a weighty sigh. "Heaven forbid you just cooperate with an order for once in your life."

She closed her eyes with a sleepy smile. "Someone's gotta keep you on your toes, Master Sergeant Logan."

His lips dusted over her forehead, lulling her into a mesmerizing trance with his deep voice so near to her ear. "You're definitely the woman for that job."

Then she was off again, drifting away into a blissful dreamland where she and Wyatt were finally pursuing those ambiguous possibilities. And just when Lucy thought nothing could be better than the vivid fantasies that swept across her sleep-addled imagination, she woke up hours later to the incredible realization that it was no dream at all; Wyatt was still there, ready to kiss her again and again until real life became far more appealing than anything she could have ever conjured up in her head.


	4. orange

_Orange: The banks of the_ _Schuylkill River_ _, Pennsylvania. 1781._

The fire at Wyatt's feet spiked upward at his careless prodding, releasing a crackling burst of orange embers that seemed to match his mood. Each shimmering flame came licking up around the wood in hot, angry billows, with ribbons of leaden smoke following after it in evasive wisps. If only he could do that, to find a way to discharge the remnants of his frustration into puffs of vaporous smoke. As it was, he felt much more kinship to a pressure cooker than he did a fire. He was all steam with no vent or relief valve; an illuminated bundle of dynamite in a tiny foxhole.

The worst part was that he wasn't the only one on this particular mission who seemed to be worked up well beyond a natural boiling point. His team - his _real_ team - could handle his occasional flashes of asshole behavior. They knew how to work around the worst of his recklessness, could shrug off his biting sarcasm, easily called him on his crap when necessary, and ultimately knew when it was better to just give him some damn breathing room.

But add in a second jackass - one whom Wyatt had long ago branded as a homicidal psychopath - and the whole thing had gone to shit more than once in the last 12 hours. Not that he was taking any of the blame for how badly he'd handled it all. No, none of this would have happened if someone had listened to him from the get-go. Garcia Flynn had been their enemy for far too long. It was unreasonable to think that throwing him into this situation could have been anything other than a disaster.

A snap sounded from the cluster of tents beyond the fire, causing Wyatt's head to jerk upward from the flames fast enough to cause whiplash. But it was the very definition of a false alarm. There was no intruder, no bear or raccoon, no Rittenhouse representative. Not even that bastard Flynn was emerging from his tent.

"Tone down the heat vision, Superman. If you glare at that campfire any harder, I think it's probably going to detonate into a million pieces."

Wyatt aimed an unamused smirk over the sizzling blaze, both eyebrows raised in mock salute as Lucy ducked past the flaps of her tent and came stumbling out across the uneven forest floor, harmless to everyone but herself. "Thanks for the advice, Lois, but I'm doing just fine out here on my own."

"Lois?" She rounded the small fire with a shake of her head, then plopped down next to him on the uncomfortable log that he'd fashioned into a makeshift bench. "I don't want to be Lois Lane. I want to be Wonder Woman."

He shrugged nonchalantly, but couldn't contain the shifting grin that formed across his mouth. "Guess that could work too. I'll admit that it wouldn't suck to see you in that little costume of hers."

She smacked his bicep in response. "Don't be a cretin."

"Sorry, ma'am. It's written in the genetic code. Can't be helped."

"Science actually refutes that sort of - "

"Lucy," he interrupted with both hands raised in surrender, "I didn't mean it, okay? You win. Please don't educate me to death tonight."

She rolled her eyes toward the moonlit sky, but there was a smile building beneath her supposed exasperation. "Fine. But let it be known that I'm only taking pity on you because you looked so miserable out here by yourself."

"I'm not miserable," he refuted in a tone that probably came across as nothing but miserable. "And what about you? Why aren't you sleeping? Is it your shoulder?"

She glanced down blankly at her shoulder as if she'd forgotten that it was attached to the rest of her body. "No, it's fine. It's been almost two weeks, Wyatt."

"Two weeks isn't an eternity, you know, especially not for a gunshot wound. It would be normal if it was still giving you trouble."

"Well it's not bothering me," she insisted, dark eyes gleaming orange with firelight as she turned to look at him again. "You, on the other hand..."

" _I'm_ bothering you?" he gaped at her incredulously. "I'm sitting out here minding my own business, silently watching out for wolves and thieves while the rest of you snore the night away, and somehow that's keeping you from your beauty rest?"

"Are you implying that I need rest to be beautiful?"

" _Lucy_ ," he growled out irritably.

She reached for his hand, wrapping her freezing fingers around his before she turned her face back up to him. "I woke up a few minutes ago and couldn't fall back asleep. I'm worried about you. Today was...a little ugly."

"Today was a lot ugly," he corrected her with a snort.

"Agreed. And I know you're pissed with me about all of this - "

"No." Wyatt shook his head, jaw tight as he protested. "It's not you, Lucy - "

"Yes it is," she murmured in return, "it might not be _all_ me, but don't deny that you're itching to tell me off right now. No bullshit, no lies - tell me the truth."

He refused to meet her eyes. After several mute seconds of nothing but crackling wood and chirping crickets, he relented slightly. "I'm...annoyed."

"With me. You're annoyed with me," she said a bit too forcefully.

He attempted to pull his hand out of her grasp, but she clung on like a greedy spider, not allowing him to so much as flex his pinky away from hers.

"Wyatt," she hummed lowly, "you're allowed to be angry with me. You know that, right?"

Now he really wanted to run, sprint actually, go tearing off through the pitch-black woods until he hit the river, and then swim as far as New Jersey just to avoid this conversation. He was fully aware that he'd been an ass today, so the last thing he wanted from her was _this_ \- a deluge of sympathy, understanding, compassion. He didn't want to be psychoanalyzed and he didn't want to talk about his feelings. He wanted to be left in peace, just him and the hissing campfire for company.

"I'll get over it, okay? Just needed to cool off."

Lucy nodded diplomatically, but he didn't miss the contrary frown that flickered over her face. And that was when the guilt kicked in. This was far from the first time he'd ever been frustrated with her. They'd clashed more than once or twice over their differing approaches to the mission at hand, and Wyatt had never before felt the need to hold back on her when they weren't seeing eye-to-eye. That hadn't been the case today. He was seething at every turn, snapping out orders like a total prick, but he'd refused to just clear the air and get it all out in the open.

And at the center of it all, yes, he was pissed with Lucy. She'd advocated the loudest for Flynn despite Wyatt's many objections, wearing Agent Christopher down with her repeated requests to re-engineer the Lifeboat for a fourth teammate and pardon him from his imprisonment so that he could aid them in their quest to permanently take down Rittenhouse. Even Rufus - the poor guy who had been shot in the gut by Al Caopne thanks to Flynn's interference - had done his best to tone down his opposition now that their team had expanded to four, which meant Wyatt was the sole killjoy of the group. So he'd boxed it all up and clamped his mouth shut for the sake of the team. Or at least he'd _meant_ to box it all up, but there may have been the occasional leak in his composure throughout the course of this stupid day.

He felt Lucy's quiet gaze tracing over him. Just when he expected her to press harder, nag him for a confession of sorts, she did the exact opposite. She gave his hand a gentle squeeze and nudged her head onto his shoulder. No speech, no pleading. The only disruption came from the occasional tiny clouds of visible breath that drifted up from her lips and scattered out into the cool night.

"I don't like the way he looks at you."

Wyatt wanted to slap his hand over his mouth as soon he'd said it, but there was no chance of taking it back now that it was out there.

She stiffened slightly, but didn't remove her head from where it rested against him. "What?"

"It's nothing. Forget it."

That incited her to action. Her face swam up before his, but there was no real expression there, only the faintest indication of curiosity lurking in her eyes. "You don't like the way that... _Flynn_ looks at me?"

"I said forget it," he muttered idiotically, as if his mere suggestion to drop it was going to have any effect on her.

As expected, she wasn't even in the ballpark of letting it drop. "Well can you blame him? He looks at me like I'm the person who double crossed him and sold him out to Homeland Security after I promised I wouldn't. And even if he'd believe me about that, it still doesn't help that we're in 1781, now does it? He's stuck here, with me of all people, forced to aid us in keeping Emma from finding John Rittenhouse, the same boy who would already be dead if I hadn't gotten in the way last time we were in the neighborhood. So yeah, can't say that I'm shocked by his chilly reception, Wyatt."

Against his better judgment, he could feel words of explanation spilling out of him before he could stop himself. "It's not like that. Even when he's not yammering on about his baseless grudge, he's...he's always watching you and it's... _intense_."

"Intense?"

He lifted his shoulders noncommittally and redirected his eyes to the dependable glow of embers instead.

"You mean intense like the way _you_ look at me?"

"What?" he scoffed, his full attention whipping back to her in an instant. "I'm not intense. Not like him."

Lucy's mouth quirked to the side. "Yeah, not always, but...you have your moments."

"And you're full of it."

She shrugged, but it was evident that she was barely holding back a laugh at his expense. "They don't call you brooding blue eyes for nothing."

Wyatt shifted sideways to face her better, causing the log to creak contentiously from beneath them. "What the hell are you on tonight, Lucy? No one calls me that."

"No one but Judith Campbell."

He squinted at her in the flimsy light of the fire, trying to peer past the strange pirouetting shadows that the flames were casting over the angles of her face. "Judith Campbell? As in Vegas in the '60s, Judith Campbell?"

"The one and only," she acknowledged with a hesitant nod.

And now he was sure that she was blushing or something, even if it was virtually impossible to see it in such unreliable lighting. "The two of you discussed my _brooding blue eyes_?"

Lucy squirmed almost imperceptibly at the teasing lilt in his voice. "Her words, not mine. And it wasn't much of a discussion. You were blowing a fuse at her lack of cooperation, I was less than appreciative of your hostile approach, and she...I don't know, she thought she was picking up on something that obviously wasn't there."

"Something...between you and I?" he asked without allowing her to break away from his gaze. "What exactly did she say?"

She blinked those Bambi-like eyes up at him several times before admitting quietly, "she, uh, asked if we were sleeping together, and at my totally bewildered reaction, she...she said that you could use it."

"Huh," he pursed his lips and nodded slowly. "Well I wouldn't quite say that _obviously_ there was nothing there at the time. There's always been some level of truth to that assumption."

Now Lucy was the one who was gaping at him like a fish stranded on dry land. "I'm sorry, what?"

"C'mon, Luce," he chided with a grin. "You caught me watching you take your bra off just 4 or 5 days before Vegas. It's not like I was ever repelled by your appearance."

"Right, well...I didn't, uh, I mean you're a guy and you're straight, so I didn't exactly read into it at the time, and - "

"Aren't you the one who was just telling me that science refutes the assumption that all men are cretins? That acting like a creepy lecher isn't automatically written into the basic male genetic code?"

If he hadn't been sure before, there was no question that she was turning pink now. "What side are you on, anyway? You do realize that this confirms what I've been saying all along. You _are_ intense. Judith said so, and you're basically telling me she was right about everything else. Do I need further evidence?"

"You know, I think it's really cute that you're all worked up about this conversation even though we're officially together now." He leaned in closer and used his free hand to brush a tendril of hair back behind her ear. "Is it really so embarrassing that she could pick up on it before it was even happening?"

Lucy snuck closer yet, her nose touching his for just one breathtaking moment. "I don't know. Is it really so embarrassing that you've been upset with me all day? Because that shouldn't be so hard to admit either, should it?"

"You're deflecting," he grunted.

Both of her eyebrows shot up in tandem. "Well if that's not the pot calling the kettle black..."

Wyatt backed away from her, sliding across the log so quickly that he was pretty sure he'd just lodged a splinter in his ass. "Okay, fine. I'm pissed, alright? I don't like working with Flynn, I really hate that you _wanted_ to work with him, I think it's total bull that Agent Christopher chose to go with your opinion over mine on this, and to top it all off, I'm annoyed with myself for acting like a spoiled toddler today just because I didn't get my way in this damn argument. How's that for honesty?"

She had the nerve to smile in the wake of his foolish outburst. "Now was that really so bad?"

"I - " he sucked in a reluctant breath, closing his eyes before he could go on, " - I really don't want to be let this shit get between us, Lucy. I've been that guy before, the one who lets his feelings bring out the worst in him, and I...I won't do that to you."

Her pinched countenance set his heart on a crash course with his plummeting stomach. "Wyatt - "

"I never told you the whole story about what happened to Jessica," he said in a rush, cutting her off before she could let him off the hook.

"You didn't have to," she whispered in a voice that was just ashamed enough to bring his gaze back to hers. "You've given some of it to me in bits and pieces over time, and eventually...well, I looked it up, Wyatt. I read about it online. I know what happened that night."

"Then don't you see?" he asked with an unmanageable thread of desperation, too relieved that she already knew to be irritated that she'd sought out the truth on her own. "We fought that night. My anger, my temper, my jealousy...that's what killed her. I left her there, Lucy. I - "

"You didn't kill her. You left her there after she _chose_ to get out of the car."

He reared back with a disbelieving sneer. "What, so it's her fault? I drank too much and acted like a major jackass so of course she got out, but that doesn't mean - "

"Doesn't mean what? That she was responsible for what happened next? Of course she wasn't. And neither were you, Wyatt. She willingly got out on the side of the road and you drove away. You both made mistakes, but no one could have predicted that there was a murderer on the loose that night." Lucy's expression softened, and she reached for his hand once more, a plea for cease-fire clearly written in her eyes. "You and I are going to fight. We're bound to disagree, to lose our tempers, to say things to each other that we'll eventually regret. It's a normal part of any relationship, even the ones that don't involve chasing criminals through time."

She paused, watched the smoldering coals for several seconds, then turned back to search his eyes with unabashed earnestness. "You had no trouble yelling at me before we were a couple. You used to know that I could handle it, that I could shout right back, and that we were always capable of working through it together even when things got rough. That shouldn't change just because we're also making out these days."

Wyatt sighed, wove his fingers through hers with a nod, and worked his way back across the log. "Is that your way of hinting that you want to make out now?"

"It sure wouldn't hurt," she said with a slow grin.

He chuckled, then dipped his head to press a long, rambling kiss to her tempting lips. It was with a glimmer of amusement that he leaned back just enough to catch her eyes. "So Judith Campbell knew we had the hots for each other way back then. I'll be damned."

"She was a very perceptive woman," Lucy murmured before leaning up to tug his mouth back to hers.

Beneath the veil of countless stars, they felt the tension of the day - as well as the week, the month, the year - loosen its grip on them, trading the burden of saving the world for the serenity of just existing together in a cozy little bubble of their own making.

That bubble was promptly shattered with the intrusive clearing of a throat from the other side of the fire.

Wyatt tightened one arm around Lucy and automatically reached for his holster with the other, but his burst of adrenaline eased marginally when his eyes landed on Flynn's tall outline.

"I believe we agreed to switch off, did we not?" He suggested with a mirthless look. "It's been several hours."

Lucy stood without preamble, muttering as she pulled on Wyatt's arm, "How the two of you can do that - keep track of time without alarm clocks or phones or anything - will forever be beyond me. Be careful out here, Flynn."

He said nothing in response, just watched the two of them blankly as they made their way around the fire and over to the group of tents on the other side. Lucy's hold on Wyatt's arm was decisively unyielding even as they approached the tents. There were three in total - one for Lucy, one for Rufus, and one for either Wyatt or Flynn depending on who was keeping watch over their campsite.

"C'mon, brooding blue eyes," she whispered with a secretive smile, "I want someone to personally protect me from the wolves and thieves tonight."

And then she was vanishing into her tent, hand still firmly clasped around his wrist, leaving him with no choice but to follow behind her.

"Bold move, Luce," he said with a laugh, collapsing over her in the snug, narrow space of their canvas covering.

"He just saw me with my tongue down your throat," she answered coyly. "If he didn't get the message before tonight, there's no mistaking it now - I like the way you look at me the best."

As if to prove her point, she curled her ice cube hands around the back of his head and dragged him down to reclaim his mouth once more.

* * *

 _review, s'il vous plait :)_


	5. emerald

_Emerald: Paris, France. 1940._

He'd always been a little guilty of keeping one eye on Lucy at all times - whether that was for the sake of her safety or to satiate his own uncompromising attraction to her, he couldn't really say - but tonight that habit was proving to be a bit more of a preoccupation than he'd like to admit; she was absolutely sparkling in a slim-cut emerald evening gown, leaving a torrent of admiring eyes trailing after her wherever she went. He couldn't blame them for staring. He was just as powerless to her presence as everyone else in the room, probably even more so considering just how entangled his heart was in the matter.

Wyatt had caught fragments of what happened the last time his team had been in Paris. They never spoke too candidly about it in front of him, but he knew the basics. Flynn blasted Lindbergh's plane out of the sky, Lucy had tried - and eventually failed, according to the history books - to convince the young pilot to rebel against Rittenhouse's influence, and BamBam hadn't come home. With an end result like that, it was no wonder that they kept the flow of information to a minimum. What they couldn't possibly understand - or maybe they did, and they just granted him the blessing of never confessing it out loud - was that Wyatt carried far more blame for the losses than they did. BamBam never should have been there in the first place, Lucy shouldn't have been alone with Charles Lindbergh or any of Flynn's goons, and Rufus deserved better backup. The bottom line was that Wyatt was supposed to be there and he'd let them all down.

He'd expected the cloud of their previous setbacks in this city to hang over their heads as they set out for another jump to France, but if anything, there'd been a buzz of excitement as they landed. It didn't matter that the beginning of World War II was already underway or that Paris would be under attack in just a few days; Lucy was thriving in the midst of such a pivotal era of history, eagerly dragging the rest of them through every boulevard and back alley in pursuit of Emma and her conspirators. It wasn't hard to discern the pattern anymore - Emma was scrambling frantically to salvage as many lost Rittenhouse members as possible, meaning she was blazing a winding trail throughout the city in hopes of convincing certain important expatriates to evacuate before the Germans could invade.

Lucy had been sure that Emma's next move would occur here, at an absurdly impractical rooftop party thrown for the most exclusive - and most deluded - members of café society, the ones who might as well have plugged their fingers in their ears like children for all the more they wanted to acknowledge the truth of what was happening all around them. The world was changing, war was just a breath away from their silly little party, and yet they drank and danced as if nothing could ever touch them beyond this self-indulgent bubble of theirs.

Wyatt couldn't be too ungrateful, though. This silly party was the sole excuse for Lucy to go out and buy that stunning green dress. Talk about a head-turner. And with no Emma in sight for the better part of an hour now, he was content to let his head turn and follow Lucy as often as possible. Now his feet were getting in on the action too, shadowing her as she cut through the crowd with a flute of champagne dangling from her fingertips, not stopping until he'd cornered her in a cozy little alcove, a tiny balcony that stood apart from the rest of the rollicking commotion.

"Hell of a party, isn't it?"

Lucy glanced back at him, her silhouette accentuated in profile against the fervent skyline. "The party's alright. But the _view_? God, isn't Paris beautiful?"

He shrugged halfheartedly and took a purposeful step toward her. "You're all I see tonight, Lucy."

"That's a good line."

There was something wickedly bashful in her countering smile, an elusive sense of magic that came with the radiant lights falling over her pale skin, a spell that had been cast in the surrounding bouquets of flowers and mingling perfumes from the party. There was a low rumble of traffic below them, barely audible in the symphony of buoyant laughter and lilting instruments playing on other end of the terrace. They were removed from the busyness of the streets and hidden away from the revelry of their fellow guests, and with the tremendous outline of the Eiffel Tower looming beyond Lucy's shoulder, Wyatt couldn't help but feel consumed by the grandness of their surroundings. He wanted her - _God_ , that was no secret - but he felt suddenly unbalanced by just how much he wished to be swept away in the intensity of his desire.

Lucy immediately nudged closer as he approached, abandoning her champagne glass on the balcony's ledge. Her cheek caressed the tip of his nose as she spoke. "' _Respirer Paris, cela conserve l'âme_.'"

"Translation, _s'il vous plaît_?" he asked in a voice that was unintentionally raspier than usual.

"'Breathe Paris in," she whispered back with an undeniable lure woven into each word, "it nourishes the soul.' Victor Hugo."

"That's nice, but Paris isn't the only thing I want to be breathing in right now."

Her luminous cinnamon eyes darted surreptitiously behind him, then flickered back to land on his mouth. "Well what are you waiting for then?"

He leaned into her with a ravenous smirk, then caught her up in a kiss that instantly galloped ahead of them, roaring to life like the smooth purr of a brand new engine. Her fingernails scraped across the back of his neck and up into his hair. He teased her lips open and slid his tongue against hers, prompting her hips to snap forward into him. Wyatt lurched with the momentum of the kiss, grasping blindly for the the balcony's wrought iron railing, searching for some point of focus to keep him from floating too far from reality.

She broke the kiss with a ragged, messy exhale, eyes still closed and hands adamantly linked to him. "I...we, um... _wow_."

He favored her with a dark smile, barely drawing enough oxygen in to keep himself from becoming lightheaded. "Yeah. Me too."

Her hands slid down from around his neck to iron out the crinkled lapels of his suit jacket, blinking slowly with a dazed look. "But the party...Emma..."

"I know," he muttered drearily, "dammit, I know."

She watched him, alert and unflinching, those long slender fingers of her still pressing into his chest with a tantalizingly too-light pressure. "You...you're _ready_ , aren't you?"

Sex was a bridge they hadn't crossed yet, a fact that they were both clearly hyperaware of, and yet equally remiss in their responsibility to actually bring it up in conversation. It hadn't been a possibility when they first made their relationship official, not when she'd just had a bullet removed from her shoulder and he was laid up with the deep gash in his leg still healing. But if she'd pressed him to make a confession, Wyatt would have told her that the physical limitations of their injuries wasn't the only thing holding him back. He'd had a few regrettable encounters with the fairer sex since he'd lost Jessica, had shamefully fallen victim to a few fleeting and insignificant flirtations along the way, but it had always been a blurred mix of loneliness and alcohol that drove him there, leaving him more bitter, more isolated, more broken than before. There was no doubt in his mind that it wouldn't be like that with Lucy, but that hadn't stopped him from taking his time in getting there, a stance that had been majorly put to the test in the last few weeks. Especially when he'd been wrangled into her tent for one hell of a makeout session on the banks of the Schuylkill River in 1781.

But his hesitation was quickly building into a tangible frustration, and now here they were, in a city full of bridges and lights and love, standing right at the edge of a landmark moment that rivaled every impressive sight and experience they'd come across in the last several days. And he knew the wait was over. There was no need for the bullshit meter tonight, because there wasn't even an ounce of apprehension in his body. He knew.

And apparently Lucy knew too, which carried the implication that she'd _also_ known that he hadn't been ready until now. He didn't know if that realization should leave him feeling ashamed of his reservations or floored by her quiet insight, but either way, he was sure that it didn't matter now.

"Yes," he answered, tilting nearer to graze his lips over her cheek, then withdrawing for another glimpse of her bright eyes. "Definitely yes. As long as you're - "

She reeled him in by the lapels and kissed him emphatically on the mouth, extracting a groan from the depths of his throat as she lingered there for longer than he could reasonably handle.

"You can mark that down as _definitely yes_ for me as well," she murmured huskily, lips drifting lower to his chin, his neck, his...

"Emma has arrived."

Lucy jumped with such startled animation that Wyatt would have been tasting blood if not for his own well-honed reflexes. With both hands bracing her to himself - and simultaneously keeping her from staggering any closer to the edge of the balcony - he glanced upward to find Flynn watching them with clinical detachment.

"Excellent," Wyatt breathed out sharply, "thanks for the heads up, pal."

He threaded his fingers through Lucy's as they followed Flynn back into the sloshing hubbub of the wartime soirée, not missing all of the poorly veiled looks of envy that were aimed at him as they descended into the crowd.

Lucy, however, was missing all of it, completely oblivious to the stir that she was causing as she rushed to keep stride with him. "That's twice now. We'd better quit that."

"Hmm?" he said, head still a little clouded with the dredges of lust. "Twice for what?"

"Flynn finding us kissing during a jump," she hissed in his ear, obviously trying to keep her words discreet, but that particular action was doing nothing to help tamp down his desire.

He nodded, clearing his throat resolutely and trying to do the same for his mind. "Don't worry. Third time's a charm, babydoll."

She looked up at him, her expression puzzled. "What's that supposed to mean?"

Wyatt didn't get the chance to answer her then. Rufus appeared at his side and Flynn was gesturing slyly to the left, silently indicating their next move in pursuing Emma. They sprang into action like the well-oiled machine they were becoming, sweeping in from opposite directions to center in on their intended target - that redheaded pain in the ass who never seemed to take a break.

But later - on a different terrace several blocks away from the party, with the lights of Paris still swirling around them in a seamlessly breathtaking arrangement of ageless melodies and affecting harmonies - Wyatt found Lucy alone again. She was still in that glittery emerald gown but her hair was loose now, fluttering down around her shoulders as she stood with her back to him, eyes glued to the horizon.

"What took you so long?" she asked without turning around.

He grinned widely, proud of her for sensing his arrival and somehow feeling even more turned on by her cleverness. There was no question that she'd come a long way from that skittish, green civilian that he'd first encountered a year ago in the waiting room of Mason Industries. He crept toward her now with artificial casualness, his heartbeat stuttering in anticipation. "Had to slip away with some discretion, Luce. We both know Rufus would have called me out for stranding him in a hotel room with Flynn. Couldn't move too quickly and risk the mission."

"Don't bring that up," she blurted out in a rush, her expression laughably insistent as he came to a stop next to her. "I'll start worrying about the two of them not getting along, which also means I'll be feeling bad for Rufus, and then I won't want to go through with this, and that would - "

"Whoa now," Wyatt bent his forehead against hers, relishing the forceful inhale that his proximity elicited from her. "I'm going to need your full concentration if we're really doing this tonight, ma'am."

"What have I told you about calling me ma'am?"

She shoved him away playfully, her smile coming so easily, so weightlessly, that he hardly recognized her as the woman who had grieved with such severity when her world had repeatedly crumbled at her feet with each unexpected hit - her sister's disappearance, her biological father's surprise identity, her mother's duplicity. It was like something in this city had revived her, had brought new life into her every movement. If he was being honest, he felt a bit revived himself, but he was sure that the lifting of his spirits was credited entirely to the woman before him.

He took a step backward, nodding his head toward the door that led out into the adjoining hallway. "I can take a hint. If you don't want me to stay..."

Lucy followed after him with a roll of her eyes. "I'm calling bullshit on that, sweetheart. You're bluffing."

"Damn straight," he returned with a smirk.

In three long strides, she was swaying into him. His hands ran down the exposed column of her spine until he reached the low dip of crepe and satin material, delighting in her resulting shiver.

"As great as you look in this dress, I'm much more interested in seeing you out of it now."

"Now _there's_ a line. You've outdone yourself with that one." Lucy reached around for one of his hands, clasping it in hers and bringing it around to her side until he could feel the small hard tab of a zipper against his fingerips. "Would you like to do the honors?"

He gave her a wolfish grin and readily accepted the offer, gliding the zipper down, down, down until the off-the-shoulder straps of her dress were no longer capable of doing their job. He reached past her, yanked the curtains to the outer terrace shut, and then let the dress melt into an enchanting green puddle at her feet. She watched him silently and he saw it all in her shining eyes - the jangle of nerves, the underlying introspection of what this moment meant to her, the burgeoning passion she felt for him; he saw it all and wanted it all, every last inch of her, inside and out.

"You're perfect," he whispered hoarsely, lips dusting over her bare shoulder, "gorgeous."

"And you're - " she bit her lip for a fleeting second as his next kiss fell lower over her racing heart, " - wearing way too much clothing."

Wyatt walked her backwards until she was sitting on the edge of the mattress. "That's an easy fix."

He made quick work of his jacket and tie, then let her take over as she reached for his shirtfront. The buttons split open one by one until the garment was discarded on the floor in a growing pile of unnecessary hindrances. Wyatt leaned over her until she was dissolving backward into the silky sea of sheets. Their lips met again and his head was buzzing away from him, brain taking flight as his body moved instinctively until he felt Lucy going eerily still from beneath him.

"What...what is it?" he asked breathlessly.

Her index finger drew a shudder-inducing shape across his abdomen. "This bruise...is it from tonight?"

He captured her hand and lifted it to his mouth, kissing her knuckles slowly. "Yeah. One of the usual Rittenhouse dunces jumped me from the side when we chased Emma out of the party. Sucker punched me like a coward."

Lucy nodded, then reached out with her other hand, brushing a puckered scar with her thumb. "1865?"

He grunted out an affirmative, then took that hand too and raised both of them above her head, pinning her down to the bed. He nipped his mouth over her collarbone, then made his way to the new pink scar on her shoulder. "The 1800s have not been good to us."

" _Time travel_ has not been good to us," she corrected quietly. "Which is why we're tipping the scales in our favor tonight."

He tilted his head sideways in a symbolic toast to the two of them. "Hear, hear."

She smiled radiantly before pulling him back down to her. Her mouth was warm and sweet with the provocative taste of champagne, and he was desperate for more of it, more of her. Funny how he'd never been much of a champagne fan until it coated her tongue and fizzled right through him like a ring of secondhand smoke.

"I missed you last time," she murmured, her breath coming thin and fast between kisses. "Paris in '27...it wasn't the same without you."

He closed his eyes for a long moment, his lips barely feathering against hers as he worked through the chokehold of a million emotions. Regret. Sorrow. Longing. _Love_...?

Words were failing him, so he swept another reverent kiss to her mouth before whispering his response at last. "Let me make it up to you."

Wyatt crawled backward just slightly, kissing her neck until he could fumble his way through the complexities of unhooking her old-fashioned strapless bra, and then his lips were migrating further south. She arched upwards at the first touch of his mouth to her breast, his name ripping from her throat as she gripped his shoulders.

Dear God, she was not going to make this easy for him.

From the moment he'd realized where this evening was headed, he'd known it had to be about her first. He was undoubtedly going to be worthless to her otherwise, and he'd rather die on the spot than leave her wanting for anything tonight. So with single-minded determination, he gave her his measureless attention, working his tongue and teeth and lips over every part of her until she was flushed and writhing, looking so on edge that he nearly lost his thinly held control just watching her. She was a goner in another moment or two, clinging and trembling and stammering his name over and over again like a beautiful benediction.

When she rallied herself back to life several minutes later, Wyatt was just as hopeless as he'd imagined himself to be. Sinking inside of her hit him like a red-hot cyclone, picking him up off the ground and catapulting him into a whole different stratosphere faster than he could blink. It was only when they were both completely spent, collapsed against each other in a heap of pillows and mussed up sheets, that he could even begin to feel the clarity of his thoughts returning to him. With a slow, almost unintelligible slur of words, he hummed into her ear, "See...third time's a charm. No interruptions."

Lucy traced his hipbone with languorous affection. "You were right. And now we'll always have Paris."

He knew those words came from something famous, spent half a second trying to place which movie she'd lifted that phrase from, but as her touch wandered lower and lower, his mind went deliciously blank again and he officially didn't give a rats ass in hell about a single movie that had ever been made in the entire history of filmmaking.


	6. violet

_Violet: Upper East Side, New York City. 1975_.

The sky was fretful above the fringe of high-rise buildings, vibrating with a charge of electricity and rapidly turning violet like a bruise. Lucy glared up at it accusingly as if it were responsible for the maddening dilemma she was currently facing.

After one not-so-successful attempt at drawing a cleansing breath, she settled on taking one more lap around the block. She needed to look casual and unassuming, but she'd never been good at _forcing_ the look of casual and unassuming. The more effort she put into a performance, the more it came across as just that - a poorly acted performance.

Maybe she'd run into one of her teammates this time. She'd take any form of help. Seriously, any one of them would do. Rufus, Flynn, Wyatt...it didn't matter.

Well, it did kind of matter. Rufus couldn't go in with her. Despite what they'd learned about the Doc in their jump to '72, it was fair to assume that Rittenhouse still had its fair share of racist pricks in this era. She probably couldn't talk her way into that meeting with him in tow. And it was very likely that Flynn would just choose to massacre everyone in the room at his first opportunity to do so, hoping for some stray bullet to randomly catch the right person and cause an unprecedented death that would somehow alter the outcome of what had happened to his family. She couldn't blame him for that, but she also couldn't condone it.

And Wyatt...? He was her best bet, but even he tended to be a little unpredictable when push came to shove. He'd grudgingly gone along with her unconventional methods before, but look where that had landed them. They were still stuck in this awful game of running through time to stop a dangerous fanatic and preserve the world as they knew it. He'd probably side with Flynn this time and choose the quicker and easier solution - go in all guns blazing, uprooting as much of the organization as possible in one savage sweep.

Lucy rounded the last corner of her pointedly nonchalant stroll. She'd accomplished nothing. She was still afraid, still alone, still clueless as to how she should proceed. But there was no time for indecision. There was a guard at the door and he was surely no fool. She couldn't keep circling the place, not when she was as conspicuous as a pyramid in the desert. Or as conspicuous as a woman at a Rittenhouse gathering.

Her decision was made in a flash. She was doing it, she was going in, _carpe_ freakin' _diem_. Because this was on her, wasn't it? She needed to step up to the plate and solve this on her own, dammit.

"Hi," she squeaked as she strutted up to the nondescript entrance of the small dinner club with as much gusto as she could muster. "I'm here for the meeting."

The brawny doorman didn't spare her a glance. "Sorry, miss, but I don't think you're on the guest list."

"No, no...I'd imagine I'm not," she said with blustery detachment.

"Well if you aren't on the list, this is as far as you go. Have a nice day."

She nodded amiably as if she could commiserate with the difficulties of his job. "Look, it's a long story, but I come from a prominent family...my - my uncle would be rather disappointed to hear that I wasn't welcomed here."

He lifted a surly brow. "Your uncle?"

"Yes sir, Ethan Cahill. Is _he_ on your list?"

She had to resist the urge to punch the air triumphantly as the man's entire countenance shifted. "One moment, please."

He disappeared into the black interior of the club for mere seconds, returning briskly with a second formidable-looking man. "Hello. Miss Cahill, is it? I'm sorry, but we had no notice of a Cahill representative attending today, so you'll understand if we weren't quite as hospitable as we should have been."

Lucy ignored the tremor of nervousness stabbing through her veins. "Just a slight misunderstanding, I'm sure."

Neither of the men moved to allow her through the door. With a chilling leer, the second man stepped forward, crowding Lucy until she felt pressed to scuttle backward over the sidewalk. "Interesting how I've never heard anything about Mr. Cahill having a niece before today..."

She jutted her chin upward, all too prepared for an answer to that particular question. "I stumbled upon our family secret quite unexpectedly. Sent me running for a considerable number of years until I could truly understand the advantages of falling in line. I made myself scarce in the meantime. A common reaction, I'm told."

Just as she'd hoped, that seemed to appease their doubts. She smiled up at them with unspoken familiarity, as if she were just the type of chummy entitled snob they'd known their whole lives, and those slick bastards bought it instantly. They parted at once, swept her through the door, and all was going just right until her name rang out frantically from behind her.

" _Lucy_?!"

Dammit. Oh, for God's sake, Wyatt... Couldn't he tone it down just this once?

She turned just in time to see him skidding to a halt at the front awning of the club.

"Wyatt, hello, just in time," she crooned smoothly, although she knew her widened eyes were blatantly giving her away if anyone looked too closely. "Gentlemen, this is my guest, Wyatt - Wyatt DiCaprio."

Oh seriously, she had to go with _DiCaprio_...? What the hell was wrong with her?

His gaze never strayed from hers as he reshaped his expression into one of cool carelessness. He breezed through the doorway and placed a tense hand on the small of Lucy's back. "Pleased to make the acquaintance."

The first of the Rittenhouse bouncers crossed his arms. "I don't know what your uncle has told you, Miss Cahill, but we don't welcome uninvited guests here."

At the words _Miss Cahill_ , the strain in Wyatt's hand went from somewhat stiff to distressingly brittle.

Her brain lurched into its highest gear, filtering through all of her late nights of research and theorizing with hasty abandon. She had to come at this from the right angle or else they were both doomed. Several painful seconds passed without a word and she was outside of herself like a specator watching a train go off the tracks or a car skidding out of control -

And just like that, she had her answer.

"His story is similar to mine," she said with a sidelong glance at Wyatt's clenched jaw. "Does the name Viola Liuzzo mean anything to either of you?"

The latter man nodded warily. "Go on."

"Well, Viola was a relative of Wyatt's, a cousin in fact. When he got the news of what happened back in '65, he didn't want anything to do with the family legacy. The... the whole family - "

"They blamed us for what the Klan did and deserted," the guard said grimly. "I remember. They were a pillar family, much like yours. It was quite a loss."

Once again, Lucy felt like throwing her hands into the air with the thrill of another triumph. They'd only been guessing when they'd hypothesized why Emma had been trying to reverse that car wreck on the road to Selma, and they'd been right - she was trying to regain an essential Rittenhouse family, and thanks to their interference, she'd failed.

Lucy trampled ahead, heart slamming against her chest far too fast as she spun the lie further. "When I told Wyatt that I was making peace with my future here, he wanted to come along...see it for himself, you know, and give it an honest chance for the first time since Viola's passing."

Wyatt's fingertips were pressing into her back so severely that he was probably going to leave marks, five miniature purple indents to remind her just how much he despised this plan of hers.

The two men conferred with each other silently, and Lucy had to press her knees together to keep them from noticeably wobbling as she waited.

"Fine," the second one said with a nod, "but you'll sit in the back, you won't talk to anyone, and we'll be watching the two of you, so if this is some kind of joke - "

"It's not," Lucy announced with another intimate smile. "And we totally understand. Seat us wherever you'd like."

Wyatt followed along mutely like a voiceless puppet on strings, granting the occasional solemn smile to their escorts as they entered into the belly of the beast and were delivered to a corner table at the back of the smoky banquet room. Lucy studiously avoided his probing gaze once they were left to their own devices, eyes darting back and forth around the narrow hall as she wrung her hands together in her lap beneath the safety of the crisp tablecloth.

He bent his head close to hers, a good-natured smirk present on his mouth but sheer fury painted in his eyes. "...the hell have you gotten us into here, Lucy _Cahill_?"

"I spotted Emma an hour ago," she answered in dull murmur, "she was at a bank on Lexington near the Chrysler Building, arranging to meet someone here. I - I heard enough to know that it was going to be a Rittenhouse thing...members only."

"And you were planning to do this alone?" His voice pitched upwards, gaining precarious momentum. "Are you insane?"

"No, I'm desperate," she answered with a calm she did not feel. "You might recall that we all decided to split up to cover more ground since this is New York City and there are only four of us. You might _also_ recall that we weren't supposed to reconvene for another hour and a half. It would have been too late then. It couldn't wait."

"So you were going to do what, exactly? Have a nice meal here while playing double agent without any backup? Just waltz right in after having a nice chat with the boys outside and hope that Emma didn't notice you when she arrived?"

"I could have handled it myself, you know. And lower your voice," she hissed between gritted teeth.

Wyatt twisted away from her, staring out over the assembling crowd for a long moment, the veins in his neck poking out in rigid agitation. When he spoke again, he'd tamed his words just fractionally. "Do you know what it would do to me if you didn't come home from this jump, Lucy? Don't you realize - "

"Of course I do," she cut in restlessly. "But you can't always be everywhere, Wyatt. Some things are beyond even your control."

He looked right through her as if she hadn't said a word. "We shouldn't have split up. We're not doing that anymore. This isn't a frickin' episode of Scooby-Doo."

She clamped a firm hand around his forearm, forcing him to acknowledge her as she loosened the clasp of her handbag and tilted it toward him. "For your information, I was taking this very seriously. I brought my own backup."

"Shit, Lucy," he breathed out, his face paling at the sight of her newly acquired handgun. " _Shit_."

"I looked for you, I really did, but I was running out of time. I had to do something, had to - "

The color quickly came back into his cheeks, a reddening mask of outrage spreading over his skin. "I - I don't...how could you do this? You think _I'm_ reckless!? This - " he jabbed an indignant finger toward the purse in her lap, " - _this_ is what reckless looks like."

She shook her head, her voice just barely scraping out of her. "I didn't have a choice."

"There's always a choice." A series of deep frown lines crinkled over his face like he was aging before her eyes. "And the worst part is that some stupid part of me would have still blamed myself for whatever happened to you. You get that, right? There's no turning back for me now, I am _always_ going to feel responsible for keeping you safe."

"And I am always going to feel responsible for the atrocities of Rittenhouse," she flung back automatically, fizzing with an anger that had nothing to do with Wyatt. " _You_ get _that_ , right?"

He stared back at her, his mouth parted and eyes bewildered. His head pivoted quickly, scanning for an audience on either side of their table with a practiced efficiency that reflected his decorated military background. When it was clear that their argument hadn't turned heads or sounded any type of alarm, he centered his gaze on her once more. His remorse was blatant. Those lucid blue eyes of his were saturated with self-reproach.

"You...I'm sorry, Luce, but you cannot do that to yourself...you are not responsible for any of this."

She closed her eyes and inhaled evenly. Her gaze returned to his with a shaky exhale. "It's my family. My goddamn legacy."

His thumb outlined her jaw with the utmost tenderness. "No, sweetheart. Your legacy is so much more than that. Yours is about rising above, doing the impossible...fighting back against all the worst odds."

Ragged emotion rose in her throat. "I - I'm the one who says sweetheart. You call me babydoll. Get it right."

"Sorry," he said with a smirk that drilled right into her heart. "Guess I let the moment get the best of me...forgot the bit, went for the real thing. My bad."

"I kind of liked it," she admitted with a weak shrug.

He laughed a soft, poignant laugh. "Good. It felt right."

The squeak of a microphone cut through the air, pulling their attention to a platform at the front of the room where a graying man in a horrid plaid blazer was calling the meeting to order. It wasn't long before he was hinting at the identity of a special _unexpected_ guest speaker who would be joining them shortly, and Lucy sat up straighter, hand instinctively moving to her purse before she felt Wyatt's fingers dusting over hers.

She suspected he would deliver some type of reprimand or warning. What she got was much worse.

"Hold onto it," he whispered. "Use it to get yourself out of here. There's a clear exit at eleven o'clock. Should be your best bet."

Lucy's eyes darted sideways to his steadfast profile. "And what about you?"

"I'll meet you outside."

Her head was shaking from side to side before he'd even finished answering. "No, it's too dangerous, you'll never make it out on your own. I can - "

"You get out and I will be right behind you." His hand circled her wrist, two fingers poised over the erratic thump of her pulse point. "I promise."

"But Wyatt - "

He leaned in and kissed her quick and sure, as if that would be enough to immediately dismiss her fears. It wasn't.

With his lips on the shell of her ear, he issued one last reminder before he rose to his feet - "don't forget to take the safety off if you need to use it."

Lucy had heard about these moments before, hell, she'd even lived her fair share of them at this point, and the truth was that time did not seem to speed up or slow down. It just kept ticking away as usual while her mouth went dry and walloping terror built in her gut.

The guest speaker stepped out onto the stage, her red hair glinting in the spotlight from above. Wyatt furtively prowled up the side of the room, twisting around the obstacles of impeding chairs and potted plants, his focus never straying from his target.

Oh God, he'd never make it back to her. There was no way. There were easily a hundred people in the room, and every single one of them was against him. Except for her. She was it, his only ally. Her palm was slick with sweat as she reached for the .25 caliber handgun that she'd picked up in a tiny pawn shop just a few blocks away.

 _Carpe_ freakin' _diem_ , right?

Lucy stood on reluctant legs, and just a second before the first exclamation of panic pierced the air, she remembered the warmth of his breath on her skin.

 _Don't forget to take the safety off if you need to use it_.

From there, time definitely sped up. The room erupted, more than one gun was going off, and people were crying out in blurred pandemonium. A deafening human stampede rushed at her, threatening to carry her along with it, but she pushed against them. She would live up to exact words Wyatt had just spoken over her a few moments ago. She would rise above, do the impossible, and fight back against all the worst odds.

Lucy fired twice up at the ceiling, scattering the crowd around her until she could see him again. Then she fired a third bullet, this one slicing doggedly in a straight line for the brawny man she'd sweet-talked into letting her in at the front door. The same man who currently had his own gun trained on Wyatt's head.

From there it all went a little blank. Her ears buzzed too loudly and her vision was foggy, distorting the chaos around her until she couldn't focus on any of it.

Then Wyatt was yelling something, barreling toward her like a frenzied bull released in the streets of Pamplona. He had her by the arm in an instant, nearly tearing the appendage right out of its socket as he took her with him. He was dragging her, practically carrying her, and it was raining. Was that the sprinklers? Had they tripped a fire alarm?

No, they were outside. The heavens had unfolded, finally giving way to the violet friction of a summer storm.

Wyatt was _definitely_ going to leave a mark this time. His grip on her arm was making her wince, but he was in a rapturous cloud of his own, eyes glowing with an otherworldly fervor when he came to a stop in some dank, tawdry alleyway. He pried the gun from her white-knuckled hand. She heard the distant click of the safety going back on, and then a jarring, jubilant laugh cut through the persistent ringing in her ears.

"I love you," he murmured as he flung both arms around her, "oh my God, Lucy, I love you."

"You - " she blinked into his shoulder. " _What_?"

He backed away gradually with his hands still fused to her, which was undoubtedly the only thing that was keeping her on her feet.

"I'm sorry, you're totally in shock, and that's normal," he assured her, his dimpled smile irrepressible. "I'll tell you again later, Luce, but to hell with it...I am so in love with you. I've _been_ in love with you for God knows how long now. You were great in there, you totally saved my hide, and I should have told you before. It's all I could think about once I left the table - dammit, I should have told her. I _love_ her."

She felt her own mouth beginning to rise slowly at the corners as if she was breaking away from a plaster mold. "I...I think you might be in shock too."

"There's a chance you're right about that," he conceded with another unbridled laugh, rain darkening his hair and flattening it against his forehead. "It's still true, though. I love you."

Now she was laughing with him, and there was no point in holding back now. She'd known it before he'd said it, known it long before this jump even. She'd definitely known it when she'd lost herself in him for the first time a few weeks ago on a warm summer night in Paris, had known it as she watched him while he was scowling down at a campfire in 1781, had been sure of it when she positioned herself between him and a steely knife during the slave rebellion of 1831. It was the only reason she'd done her best to let him off the hook in Alabama when he sat mournfully on that bent piece of guardrail and admitted that the scene of Viola's crash had been salt on the wound of his wife's murder; she'd backed away, offered him space when space was absolutely the most terrifying concept her heart could have conceived. But she'd done it for him.

 _She loved him_.

"I love you too," she confessed with tears trickling down her face and a dizzy smile forming on her lips. "Seriously, Wyatt. I've loved you for a long time."

He returned that dizzy smile in a flash before wrapping her up in his arms again and twirling her around in a reeling circle.

Lucy honestly wasn't sure what exactly had happened back there in that club, wasn't sure who else had made it out alive or what any of it meant for them. What she did know was that she was incurably in love with Wyatt Logan and that he absolutely loved her back. The rain falling against her skin felt like redemption, and his wet, open kiss on her mouth tasted like a fresh start.


	7. gold

_Gold: San Francisco, California. 2017._

Wyatt stared down at tiny gold circle for what felt like the billionth time, the brisk December air seemingly rushing past his ears at an impossibly fast hyper-speed. The old-world grandeur of the Bently Reserve's upper veranda - daunting columns, gleaming marble, intricate scrollwork - folded around him like a restrictive envelope. The irony wasn't lost in him. In fact, it had actually helped to fuel this decision of his once he'd kicked the idea around a few times. Connor Mason's choice in party venue was the former San Francisco Federal Reserve, a prominent downtown landmark that dated as far back as 1924. The building seemed out of place now, mobbed by a sea of newer, crisper, taller rivals. But if Wyatt turned his back to the rest of the city and distanced himself from everything but the Bently's remarkable architecture, he could have been convinced that he was caught up on another jump through time.

Instead, he had a modern iPhone in his pocket, a fancy new watch - a ridiculous thank you gift on behalf of Mason Industries - on his wrist, and a nervous throb in his gut that had nothing to do with formulating a mission to stop Rittenhouse from screwing up another historical event.

That thought brought a small smile to his face despite the swell of rumbling adrenaline in his system. The nervous throb in his gut _definitely_ had nothing to do with formulating a mission to stop Rittenhouse, because there was no mission to stop Rittenhouse anymore. He wasn't naive enough to believe that the shadow organization was incapable of sprouting back to life somewhere down the line, but things were definitely looking up for the time being. Emma hadn't survived their encounter in '75, Carol was officially incarcerated, and Homeland Security had made damn sure that there was no Mothership or Lifeboat left to be stolen at this point. Their days of time travel were officially behind them.

And Wyatt almost hated to admit it, but this was turning out to be one hell of a Merry freakin' Christmas.

For all of his usual bah humbugging around the holidays, this year was so undeniably different that he couldn't even pretend to be grumpy or disinterested. A jazzy rendition of 'Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas' was drifting toward him from inside the ornate banquet hall, reminding him that his usual troubles really were out of sight...and that maybe, just maybe, the fates _would_ allow them to all be together through the years. God, he really hoped so.

Hope. Wyatt Logan had hope. It honestly still felt a little too good to be true.

His fingers closed over the delicate gold band in his hand before slipping it back into its hiding place. Just in time too, because Lucy chose that exact moment to come clattering out of the door behind him, two crystal glasses of spiked eggnog in hand. Her cheeks were pink already, whether from the cold or the merriment, he couldn't really tell.

"Hey," she smiled blithely, offering him a frosted glass. "You look awfully serious. Not enough eggnog in you yet, soldier."

He took the drink from her hand with a look of suspicion. "That was an intentional choice. Isn't this stuff supposed to be disgusting?"

Lucy pressed a hand over her heart, an exaggerated gasp spilling out of her with a puff of visible air. "Don't tell me you've never had eggnog before."

"Sorry to disappoint," he shrugged noncommittally, "but I have no memory of ever trying it."

"Well there's no time like the present, now is there?"

She raised her glass with a saucy smile - one that told him there was a very intentional double meaning lurking in her words - and as per usual, he was incapable of resisting the compelling combo of her red lips and sparkling eyes. Wyatt clinked his glass against hers and took a tentative sip.

Then almost spit it right back out all over her.

"Whoa," he rubbed his hand across his mouth after forcing down a difficult swallow, as if that could eradicate the entire experience. "Am I supposed to drink it or chew it?"

She laughed unreservedly, her head tilting back with the force of her amusement. "It's not that bad, Wyatt."

"Uh yes, it really is and you know it. You're only downing this for the..." he peered dubiously into the frothy beverage, "...rum?"

"Among other things," she answered, still laughing at him as she leaned closer, the fingers of her free hand dipping into his jacket pocket to lure him closer.

He took the cue and readily wrapped an arm around her, kissing the giggles away from that taunting red mouth of hers. It wasn't long before she was melting into him like a thawing snowflake, all traces of hilarity replaced with a low hum of contented enchantment that radiated from her lips to his. As always, her very presence brought a contagious incandescence with it, automatically lifting him from the pit of his churning apprehension.

When he pulled back to look at her, he was feeling more than a little smug at the faraway preoccupation glinting in her expression. "How much of that stuff have you downed, Luce?"

"Not much at all." She narrowed her dark eyes skeptically. "Why? You monitoring my intake tonight? This _is_ a party, you know."

"Just checking," he said a little too quickly, then found himself laughing stupidly as his own lack of tact. He should be better at this by now, but God was that ever far from the truth.

Lucy's mouth popped open to question him further, but he cut her off before she could get any further.

"Look, it's not...I just want to talk to you about something, okay? Something that requires a certain level of sobriety."

"Okay...is it something that would explain why you've been standing out here on your own - looking like the ghost of Christmas past, I might add - instead of having a front row seat to witness Rufus destroying everyone else on the dance floor during 'All I Want For Christmas Is You'?"

The woman missed nothing, did she? But he'd known that, banked on it even.

"Yeah it would, although now I'm really hoping that there will be an encore of that particular performance," he answered sincerely, both eyebrows raised at the visual she'd painted for him.

"I'm pretty sure there's about a dozen cell phone recordings floating through cyberspace right about now." She glanced backward through the set of glass-paned double doors with a smile. "Plus he's just getting started in there. Rufus is the one who's been knocking back the eggnog like a real party animal. Odds are definitely in your favor."

"In more than one way, I hope."

Her cinnamon gaze whipped back to his in an instant. "Okay, what gives? Spill it, sweetheart."

Wyatt took both of their glasses and settled them on the nearest patio table, then drew her closer to the railing with his hands interlaced in hers. He watched the blurring rush of traffic below them, his mind momentarily straying to another night, one that had occurred more than seventy years ago but simultaneously felt like just yesterday to him. A different party, a smaller balcony, another twinkling city...but the same beautiful woman who'd unexpectedly stolen his heart with an unavoidable one-two punch of snappy comebacks and potent hugs.

"There's a particular topic that we've been very carefully avoiding lately," he said gently, immediately picking up on the shadow of a frown gathering between her eyebrows. "And I know it's - "

"Do we have to do this tonight?" she asked in a thin, panicky voice. "This is supposed to be fun, Wyatt. All things merry and bright. Feliz Navidad. Deck the halls and - "

"Lucy," he implored softly, gripping her hands that much more solidly as she tried to peel herself away from him.

"No, dammit, have you not a heard a single song playing in there? Are you immune to Brenda Lee? To the sentimental feeling? The silver and gold? I want to be jolly. Let me jolly."

He almost broke right there and skipped everything else he'd prepared. Her shining eyes were no longer filled with glee, but rapidly sinking in gathering tears instead, and he felt like a first-class jackass for not foreseeing how she'd interpret his well-rehearsed opening line. He scrambled for a way to turn it around, but there was only one simple solution that came to mind, and he went for it with abandon. An insistent hand slid through her hair and propelled her forward into a brazen kiss that left her just as speechlessly wide-eyed as the first time he'd done such a thing with Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow staring at them from across the room.

"This will be jolly and sentimental and merry," he exhaled against her lips, feeling a little wide-eyed himself. "I promise, okay? Just hear me out."

She nodded hesitantly, clutching his jacket between her fingers like it was her only lifeline. "I'm listening."

"This last month or so has been..." he paused, throat closing up for just a second until he could power through it, "...it's been better than anything I had ever hoped for at this point in my life. Just being with you every day, no stress, no time travel, no Rittenhouse? It's almost been perfect."

" _Almost_?" she asked with a twinge of halfhearted sarcasm.

"Almost," he confirmed with a nod, "because we both know it's temporary and neither one of us are doing a good job of pretending to enjoy it while it lasts. Which is why we need to discuss it, Luce. I don't want to have this uncertainty hanging over our heads for another second, because that will really get in the way of all that holly jolly Christmas crap that I'm sure you'll have hidden up your sleeve for the next week and a half."

She pressed her lips together in a lopsided grin. "Who, me?"

"Yeah," he chuckled, lowering his head just enough to leave a quick kiss on her forehead. "You're hardly subtle, ya know?"

She scoffed indignantly but made no further protest. "So please rip off the band-aid already. Do you know where you're going next? Have they already given you new orders?"

Wyatt shook his head, his eyes locked on hers without reservation, most likely giving her the exact look that had supposedly earned him the reputation of being ' _intense_.'

"I've been discussing a possible reassignment with my superiors. Nothing is official yet because...because there was something I needed to do first."

He was met with nothing but silence. Lucy stared up at him, clearly holding her breath for how alarmingly rigid her body was, her eyelashes beating together rapidly as she waited for him to go on.

"When I think about the person I was before I met you, Lucy, I see someone who was completely lost. I was bitter, lonely, impulsive..."

"Reckless," she supplied with a tiny smile.

He laughed quietly, his thumb smoothing over her knuckles. "Yeah, and a real hothead too from what I've heard. But for whatever reason, that never seemed to faze you. You've somehow taken it upon yourself to accomplish the one thing I was sure could never be possible - you've shown me that I have an entire life ahead of me, that there's still something left to live for. And while there will always be so much I don't understand about all of it - fate, loss, death - I am sure that this is what Jess would have wanted for me."

Wyatt took a short step backward, holding firm to Lucy's hand as he reached into his pocket.

"Looking back from that first trip to the Hindenburg until now, I've really only gained more questions than I have answers. But when I look at you, Lucy, it's like the whole universe comes into focus. I don't doubt you. I don't doubt us. Maybe in the grand scheme of things we haven't been together for very long, but from where I'm standing, it feels like I've already loved you for a few centuries."

He shot her a wry grin, one that she hastily returned despite the first teardrop beginning to make its way down her cheek. The grin on her face promptly evaporated, however, once he dropped down onto one knee. She covered her gaping mouth with her free hand, whispering his name in a staggering sigh.

"Now that we're done worrying about the past, I want to ask you if you'll spend your future with me." He freed the ring from the folds of his pocket, only fumbling ever so slightly as he grasped it between his thumb and index finger. "I decided to skip the box this time...we'd really be screwed if I dropped it from a second story balcony above the streets of downtown San Francisco, wouldn't we?"

She nodded, hand still clapped over her mouth, expelling several more tears from her enormous eyes as she blinked down at him.

Unnerved by her silence and beginning to question the wisdom of proposing in front of an entire row of windows - windows that potentially exposed him to all of their friends and coworkers if they happened to spare a glance in their direction - Wyatt scraped the last few words together and delivered them with what hopefully came across as something resembling confidence. "I love you so much, Lucy. So what do you say? Will you marry me?"

He wanted to hear one word, just one simple word made up of three vitally important letters.

Lucy dropped her hand away from her face and furrowed her brow with a sniffle. "And then what...? You go off all over the world and...and I just...wait?"

Wyatt tried to swallow, but the effect was like shoving gravel into a blender. "Maybe I wasn't clear. I'm not going anywhere, not unless that's something we decide on together. I want to be wherever you are, permanently. Whether that means transferring, instructing full-time, or finishing out and - "

" _Really_? No bullshit?" she broke in on a tattered breath.

It had been the very last question he'd expected tonight, and he loved her that much more for always keeping him guessing, throwing his own words back in his face as often as she could get away with it.

Which was _always_. She could get away with anything and they both knew it.

"No bullshit. I'm open to the possibilities - all of them, as long as you're with me."

"Yes," she chirped out with a sob and a smile, hopping up and down on her heels. "Oh my God, _yes_!"

"Thank God," he grinned, tears beginning to blur in his own eyes as he watched her bounce with glee. "Okay, I need you to hold still for a second, please. Kinda hard to put a ring on a moving target."

Lucy made a sniffling noise that was part chuckle, part scoff. "And here I thought that was exactly what a Delta Force operative was trained to do."

She held still as he'd requested despite the sass, gripping his shoulder with her right hand as she extended the left, but there was still an adorable tremble lingering through her that she couldn't tame. And then quite suddenly, her entire frame went stock-still once he'd finally wrangled her twitching ring finger into submission.

Wyatt glanced up at her, immediately identifying the crinkled concentration in her gaze as she stared down at the diamond. It was the curiosity of a scholar.

"Go ahead," he breathed out with a patient smile, standing up and wrapping his arms around her waist. "You know you want to ask."

Her lips quirked upward in bashful acknowledgement for being caught so easily. Then her attention turned back to the Art Deco ring that was now perched on her slim finger. "Where...where did you get this? It looks like an antique, but..."

"But it also looks new? That's because it's about 85 years old, but has really only existed for less than 10."

Recognition began to burn in Lucy's steady gaze, but he could tell that she still wasn't quite buying it. "So you're saying..."

"I brought it home from Paris, Luce. I know you're not wild about the idea of disturbing the stream of time by transporting objects from the past, but - "

"You bought this ring in _1940_?!" There was really no telling if the escalating disbelief in her voice was the sign of a good or bad reaction, but then she was cry-laughing with even more enthusiasm than before, her arms winding around his neck as she began bouncing up and down again. "Oh my God, you bought this ring in 1940! Wait...we - we had only just slept together when you bought this ring?! You - you seriously did that?"

He couldn't help but laugh at her whirling train of thought. "Kinda crazy, I know, but I was on a bit of a high when I woke up that morning."

She drew back, her eyelashes clumping together with tears, her smile more dazzling than all of the Christmas lights in the entire Bay Area put together. "I love you, Wyatt. We might both be crazy, but I was sure of it long before Paris, and I - I _love_ you."

She pressed herself up against him and kissed him, breathing all of her perpetual cheer right into him, leaving him feeling more merry and bright than he'd even known possible. And through the various layers of clothing between them - his shirt and suit jacket, her peacoat and the party dress beneath it - Wyatt would have sworn that he could feel her heartbeat crashing against his over and over again.

"Wait, wait," she pulled back with a surge of frantic energy, both hands flitting over her wool coat in search of her phone. "I have to call Amy, I need to tell her - "

Wyatt seized both of her wrists with a knowing smile. "That actually won't be necessary."

He almost erupted with laughter at her scolding look. "Uh, _actually_ , telling my sister is absolutely - "

"I know, trust me, I know," he grinned, "but what I'm trying to say is that it won't require a phone call. Look."

With his hands still wrapped around her wrists, he swiveled her body a few degrees to the right and tipped his head toward the walkway that extended from the Bently's terrace to form a small bridge over the bustling street, connecting their building to the adjacent block on the other side. Amy waved an eager hand over her head, smiling elatedly as she held onto the gleaming Nikon camera poised in her other hand.

"She saw the whole thing and has it all on - "

But Lucy was already gone, calling out to her sister over the blare of traffic until they could meet halfway on the bridge in an endearingly clumsy hug.

He shook his head with a grin before turning just in time to see Rufus flying through the glass doors to crush Wyatt in a congratulatory bear hug of his own.

Yeah, it seemed as if the fates were definitely granting him that Merry Little Christmas after all.

* * *

 _this chapter was brought to you by super premature Christmas music (because I wrote this in September LOL)_

 _Just one more to go - the epilogue!_


	8. blue - epilogue

_Blue. Elliston Vineyards, California. 2018._

For all the colors and hues that have shaded her world in the last 35 years, nothing could ever outshine the brilliant blue light that lives in his eyes. It's that reassurance, that belief in him, in _them_ , the conviction that he's the only one for her - that's what kept Lucy's feet moving down the stone walkway.

She was deathly afraid of tripping on the white aisle runner. The swag of organza on the right side of the gazebo was a little crooked. The horizon was becoming increasingly overcast despite the five different weather reports that had predicted nothing but clear skies. She was regretting her choice to let Amy go down the pathway without her. Who said your maid of honor couldn't also walk you down the aisle? What had she been thinking? Did it really prove anything to do this part on her own? That had been a stupid idea. Publicly holding onto her last name for professional purposes - while privately proclaiming herself a Logan in every realm that didn't include getting published - was enough of a statement. No one would have questioned her feminist qualifications if she'd chosen to be escorted by someone, _anyone_ at all, to avoid doing this alone...

But all of it - the threat of her inner klutz appearing at this very moment, her badgering perfectionism, the shrinking feeling of being thrust into the limelight as all eyes turned to watch her - evaporated in the instant that his true blue eyes locked on hers. She could breathe again. She had a mission, and she'd be damned if she took a second longer than necessary to get to him. She could definitely march herself down the aisle when the love of her life was standing under that gazebo, so crisp and striking in his dress blues, waiting there just for her.

Wyatt took an unchoreographed step toward her before she could even reach him, which evoked a round of chuckles and _awww_ s from their small gathering of family and friends. His hand locked around hers and there were already tears welling in his vivid gaze when he met her partway.

"Ready to get married, ma'am?"

She smiled so hard it nearly hurt. "More ready than you know."

He leaned in like he was going to kiss her way ahead of schedule, then stopped short and laughed at himself quietly before leading her the rest of the way to the altar.

To think that she'd almost walked away from all of this before she'd even really known him seemed impossible now. She'd almost never stepped aboard the Lifeboat, almost never set her sights on the Hindenburg, almost never came back to Mason Industries a few months later after she'd learned the truth about her mother's loyalties. And even then, with Wyatt's indefinite suggestion of possibilities, she'd almost convinced herself that he'd never be ready to move past the boundary of friendship. _Almost_.

When she allowed herself to look back on the worst days, the ones where she'd been more lost than ever before, she knew how easily it all could have gone wrong. But instead of giving in and giving up, they had chosen hope. They had chosen perseverance. Eventually, they chose each other, and today was the culmination of every step and misstep that they'd taken along the way.

The ceremony went on seamlessly, but Lucy could barely concentrate on a single note of the music that she'd painstakingly chosen, could barely process a solitary word that was spoken over them. She wanted nothing more than to toss the flowers aside, dismiss the crowd, and just fling herself at Wyatt and never let go.

And as soon as they traded those final "I do's," that was exactly what she did. Whether he actually anticipated her eagerness this time or had just developed an instinctive ability to brace himself for impact, she wasn't sure. Either way, Wyatt was ready when she launched herself at him before the minister had even finished his line about kissing the bride. His arms were around her, holding her fast regardless of her delirious momentum, and the kiss that followed would go down in the history books as a moment she'd never, ever forget.

When they finally parted - breathless and enraptured - it was to a clamor of cheering and applause, along with a long whistle from Rufus who stood off to the side, practically leaping with excitement in his groomsman's tux.

Lucy had thought she'd known happiness before this, had experienced more love and joy in the last several months than any one person had any right to possess, but looking at Wyatt now and seeing her _husband_ \- her partner for all the years ahead of them - sent a giddy thrill straight to her heart that surpassed everything that had come before it. If life was anything like a kaleidoscope, this turn of the wheel was bigger and brighter than anything she could have ever planned for, and the lesson was clear. She'd taken a risk, adjusted the lens, let some light in, and all the broken bits had transformed into the most dazzling of pictures.

On her ring finger, next to the very recently added wedding band, there was something old - a stunning diamond ring that Wyatt had picked out on his own and hand delivered from 1940s Paris.

Her wedding dress was something new, the exact type of lacy ethereal gown she'd dreamed of since she was young.

As for something borrowed, she had a sparkly hair pin of Amy's tucking her veil into place low on the back of her head.

And something blue? That was Wyatt's adoring gaze, brimming with enough love and commitment to last for today and for always.

* * *

 _The End!_

 _I hope you enjoyed reading Kaleidoscope! I've been dying to share it for some time now, so thank you for going along on this ride with me. Keep an eye out for more Timeless Big Bang content this month! Go follow TBB on tumblr if you have an account there & then you won't miss a thing :) _

_AND SEASON 2 IS COMING. HOORAY._


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